1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for processing video and audio data. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program product to identify customer behavioral types for optimizing loss leader merchandizing from a continuous video stream.
2. Description of the Related Art
Customers have a wide selection of stores from which to purchase retail items. Retail items are items offered for sale and include, for example, clothes, food, groceries, furniture, automotive supplies, or any other tangible thing that may be purchased. Retail items may also include retail services, such as dry cleaning services, food delivery services, automobile repair services, vehicle detailing services, or any other services. The stores from which shoppers may purchase these retail items or services may be traditional brick and mortar stores or an online store accessible only through a webpage. The traditional brick and mortar stores compete for customers' business, often investing large sums of money to devise ways to entice customers to visit. One commonly used method for increasing customer traffic is by offering loss leader items for sale.
A loss leader item is a retail item that may be given away or sold at or below cost in an effort to attract customers to a store with hopes that those customers will purchase complementary items. Complementary items are retail items that are offered to a customer for purchase after the customer has been drawn to the store by the loss leader item. Oftentimes, the complementary item is related to the loss leader item. A loss leader item may be, for example, a razor. The use of the razor may require the purchase of complementary items, such as, razor cartridges, shaving cream and/or aftershave. Other examples of loss leader items include, without limitation, gasoline, inkjet printers, video game consoles, food items on fast food value menus, and movie tickets.
Offering loss leader items to the public may be a risky endeavor. If not carefully planned out, the sale of loss leader items by a store may result in substantial financial losses. For example, a gas station may lose money on the sale of competitively priced gasoline, but may make enough profit on the sale of complementary items, which are, in this example, convenience store items that offset the losses attributed to the sale of gasoline. If, however, gas station customers only purchase gasoline, then the gas station may suffer financial losses. Consequently, loss leader merchandizing is an important aspect of offering loss leader items to customers.
Loss leader merchandising is a scheme or strategy for increasing customer traffic to a store and for influencing customers to purchase as many complementary items as possible. The marketing strategy may include, for example, identifying loss leader items and associated complementary items, disbursement of advertisements, placement of loss leader items and complementary items in a store, the location of a shelf of kiosk, the use of special events for promoting the sale of retail items, or location of point of purchase displays. Currently, loss leader merchandising is developed from data collected from transactional or static data elements, such as, point of sale data, surveys, or census data. This method, however, does not provide insight as to whether loss leader merchandising is effective. For example, if a customer purchases loss leader items and complementary items, point of sale data provides no indication as to whether the loss leader merchandising contributed to the purchases.